![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldJanet Kornblum's USA Today article "Social, work lives collide on networking websites" didn't tell me much I didn't already know about social networking--although the Nielsen Online figures which showed, among other things, the recent declines in membership in AOL COmmunity, AOL Hometown, and Reunion.com--but it did outline the extent to which social networking can compromise individual privacy.
I've been active on the Internet since September of 1997, but I only really became cognizant of privacy issues soon after I started up this blog early in the spring of 2002. Since then, I've assumed that my online life is an open book and have tried to conduct it in a creditable manner. I still find it a bit unnerving, and it doesn't help me to know that an increasing number of people in Canada and around the world are coming to experience the same thing. Who knew that a world made of glass would turn out to be stressful?
Just after her honeymoon last March, Wadooah Wali took the de rigueur next step these days: She changed her status on the networking websites Facebook and MySpace from "in a relationship" to "married" and posted pictures of her partner — another woman.
The well-wishes from friends and family poured in, stoking Wali's happiness. Then came a note that jolted her, noticeable for what it didn't say. No congratulations. Just: "Nice pictures."
It was from a professional contact Wali hardly knew — someone to whom she never would have sent something as personal as a wedding announcement, let alone pictures. Wali likes to keep her personal life separate from her professional acquaintances, wary that some might react negatively to her sexual orientation. But suddenly her social circles had collided.
Talk about awkward.
"I was worried that the repercussions of TMI — Too Much Information — was going to be a problem," says Wali, 33, director of communications for a Los Angeles-based Internet company.
The episode was a reflection of how the walls that separate parts of a person's life can be knocked down in the emerging world of online social networking. Everyone you know — high school and college classmates, business associates, someone you met in a nightclub — and even total strangers can become a "friend" on your personal Web page and gain access to all sorts of information and discussions about you.
I've been active on the Internet since September of 1997, but I only really became cognizant of privacy issues soon after I started up this blog early in the spring of 2002. Since then, I've assumed that my online life is an open book and have tried to conduct it in a creditable manner. I still find it a bit unnerving, and it doesn't help me to know that an increasing number of people in Canada and around the world are coming to experience the same thing. Who knew that a world made of glass would turn out to be stressful?
